


Long Journey Home

by jade_lil



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Arashi - Freeform, Fanfiction, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Sakumoto - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3950542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jade_lil/pseuds/jade_lil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, he tells himself this; It was your choice as much as it was his so let it go, move forward. Sometimes it is enough. But most of the time, it isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Journey Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetspicyhot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetspicyhot/gifts), [shinigamiami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinigamiami/gifts).



> Inspired by the Sakumoto grandma incident.

Sometimes, he tells himself this;  _It was your choice as much as it was his so let it go, move forward._

Sometimes it is enough.

But most of the time, it isn’t.

+++

He doesn’t say it but he honestly envies Ohno and Nino’s relationship, how they are able to stick together despite almost falling apart so many times in the past.

He can’t even remember how many times he felt honestly grossed out by their shameless display of affection back then, but not anymore.

He watches, amused, through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, how Nino and Ohno moves like tectonic plates, one shifting and the other doing the same without as much as thinking about it. They’re like two pieces of one whole, two part of something that couldn’t be complete if one is missing even if the other one is there.

He finds it heartbreakingly beautiful, to be honest, and he still finds it beautiful despite seeing it countless time over the course of fifteen years. He still finds it heartbreakingly beautiful to be able to see it now, years after they first got together knowing that he could never have the same no matter how much he wants to.

He chances a glance towards the person sitting not so far from Ohno and Nino, with the person’s face buried into his third newspaper, thinking, _that was your choice, you have to live with it._

+++

Nino absently tucks a paper towel into their Leader’s collar and Leader dutifully stays still as if they’ve done the same thing so many times before that the movement seems more like muscle memory than anything, Ohno splitting Nino’s chopsticks in two for him and handing them over to Nino before he does his own.

In the next minute or so, they are eating their lunches in silence and he is still there, watching the two.

 _That was your choice, you have to live with it_ never sounded so hypocritical, until now.

+++

“You didn’t know, did you?” Nino asks him while they are lounging lazily at the balcony of Ohno’s hotel room. Ohno had long found his way beside Nino, face tucked against the side of Nino’s neck and snoring.

“I didn’t know what?” he asks, too lazy to turn his head around to face Nino, opting on watching the stars and feeling stupidly sentimental about it. Damn, he feels like crying again and he sort of already did that a while back, with Leader before Nino came in and spoiled the fun.

“That you  broke Sho-chan’s heart,”

“I broke –  _what?”_ he thinks he misheard it and this time, he did whip around to face Nino. “Fuck, are you high?”

Leader stirs but doesn’t wake up and he watches as Nino’s left hand comes up to stroke the back of Leader’s neck.

“So I was right,” Nino muses, with feelings, “You  _didn’t_ ,”

He knows he looks as high-strung and alert for someone who is probably a little drunk.

“What the fuck are you even saying?” he grumbles, throwing a Nino a glare that would have sent anyone packing, but as it is, Nino simply stares at him, seemingly lost in thought.

+++

He doesn’t want to think about it, he really doesn’t, but because he keeps on telling himself he doesn’t want to think about it, he ends up thinking about it even more.

It’s so frustrating, so fucking unfair because fuck, it’s been fifteen years and they’re in the middle of their 15thyear anniversary concert and the last thing he needs right now is the kind of distraction that not even a bottle or two of hard liquor can fix.

“Don’t think about it too much, Jun-kun,” Leader tells him in that way only Leader can, squeezing his shoulder in a way that is probably reassuring but it’s hard to think and feel that way when he feels a little fucked up inside, like he’s failed at something he knows he’s pretty good at.

He grumbles something incoherent under his breath and goes to order another bottle of Leader’s favorite whiskey instead.

+++

He stares at the photos of himself and wonders if he’s always been this transparent about his feelings for Sho.

If the others saw it too but simply didn’t go out their way to comment on it because they probably thought it was just a simple crush – maybe hero worship – which will soon pass.

It didn’t; he knows that now. It took him fifteen years, and two still disgustingly in love bandmates to know that he's never gotten over that crush – now spiraled into something else, something more intense, more definite – no matter how hard he tried to.

He wonders if he needs fifteen more to decide either to give up on it entirely or surrender that there’s nothing he wants more than to have what Ohno and Nino have for himself, and he knows that now, it's a fight between what he thinks is right and what his heart has long been after.

He wonders if he will even last the few days before either one breaks.

+++

“You didn’t know?” Aiba asks, more like confirms and his heart breaks again. He shakes his head. Aiba looks seconds away from reaching over and tugging him into the taller man’s arms.  “I’m sorry, I thought –“

“So does this mean everyone knows but me?” he asks, mouth twisting bitterly at the edges. He wants to laugh but he also feels like crying, it’s honestly a very complicated feeling.

Aiba opts on reaching out to pat his hand. “Sho-chan said you knew what’s best, that’s why he didn’t say anything,”

He’s not sure if he’s hearing this correctly because everything about this sounded foreign, seemingly like a distant memory that doesn’t belong to him.

“And besides,” Aiba follows before he can even reply, “it wasn’t like you and him were like Leader and Nino before,”

“What does that even mean?” he grumbles, annoyed.

“Just that, well, you know how Leader and Nino were before, not as tame as they are now but, well, we knew about you and Sho-chan, too –“

“There’s nothing –“ he grumbles quickly but Aiba ignores him and continues as if he hadn’t been interrupted.

“- so we figured – well, Sho-chan did, too, actually,"

"Figured what?"

Aiba looks sad and for a moment, he thought he will cry but then Aiba is speaking again, "That what you felt for him, you know, it was just nothing but a crush. It will pass, Sho-chan said, and it did. You’d get over it, he said, and you did. End of story,”

A beat, then, “But you didn’t, did you?”

 _No, no I didn’t_ , he wants to say, wisely biting his tongue just in time for the words to slip out his mouth.

+++

It took him a moment to realize where he is and another longer one to decide whether to go through with it or leave.

His heart is stammering hard inside his chest, his palms sweaty and he’s having trouble keeping his breathing even. It’s funny that he still feels this way about someone he’s chosen to give up years ago, and even funnier that a split second’s decision was what it took for him to be reminded of the things he successfully evaded for years.

 _The choices are yours so you have to live with them_ , he seldom tells himself this, and to be honest, he knows that it only worked then because he had no idea there were so much more to this story than he thought he already knew about.

He’s not sure if this is the right way to go. If by coming here he will only make matters worse but he knows he can’t go back now. He wants to know if it’s true, if he really did break Sho’s heart when he walked away that night, the same way his heart was broken, too, when Sho didn’t follow.

He wants to make sure he did the right thing, by not glancing back when it was what his heart was telling him to do then, but didn't.

And if not, well.

He heaves a breath and raises his hand, all ready to knock when the door opens abruptly. He’s thankfully more alert now than he was seconds before, as he’s able to swing out of the way and avoided colliding with a faceful of Sho.

“Matsumoto-san?” says the older man, looking more than a little surprised. “What are you doing here?”

His stomach is in knots, his fingers trembling something bad but he doesn’t let those get in the way. Instead, he squares his shoulders and meets Sho’s eyes straight on.

“Can we talk?”

+++

It turns out Sho is going somewhere. “My grandmother was admitted to the emergency last night,” the older man explains, leading the way towards the parking lot. “And I only have this three hours free today to visit her since I’ll have a full-packed day tomorrow so –“

He doesn’t even hesitate when Sho opens the door for him.

“I’ll go with you then,”

++++

It was a quiet drive and it took them not even fifteen minutes to reach the hospital. Sho didn’t ask him again but it is evident in the way Sho kept throwing him glances through the rearview mirror when Sho thought he wasn’t looking that Sho already knew why he came over anyway. Still, he didn’t ask.

“I’ll just be quick,” Sho tells him, already on his way out of the car when he stops him with a firm hand around the older man’s wrist.

“I said I’ll go with you,” he says, already out of the car before Sho can argue.

+++

It was a quick visit because it turned out that Sho’s grandmother is still unconscious. He didn’t ask what had happened to her, especially since Sho’s other family members were inside the hospital room too when they arrived and he didn’t want to be rude. He simply mumbled his apologies and stood back near the door and watched Sho as he pressed a kiss against his grandma’s temple while the other talked in hushed tones.

“She slipped when she tried to go to the bathroom by herself,” is what Sho tells him when they’re back in the car and Sho is driving them back to Sho’s apartment, probably. “Her nurse went out to get her breakfast and when she came back, gramps is already lying on the floor, unconscious,”

Sho’s tone is filled with worry that the sound of it shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore, having heard the same tone for more than a few occasions during the course of their careers but it still has that effect on him. The heart-wrenching kind, despite the fact that this is different; she is his immediate family afterall and Sho is allowed to be worried.

He doesn’t realize he is reaching over to squeeze the older man’s arm until he does it, mumbling “She’ll be okay, Sho-san,” in a way that he supposes is reassuring before he remembers to take his hand back, probably red in the face.

Sho catches his hand halfway, tangles it with his own and gives it a little squeeze, their eyes meeting briefly before Sho takes his gaze back to the road without letting his hand go.

He says nothing despite knowing that this, right here, is what he's most afraid of.

+++

To his surprise, Sho simply drives around. He doesn't stop and he doesn't let go of his hand either, occasionally throwing him a smile that would have been anything but sweet if he's not feeling the proverbial butterflies fluttering inside his belly.

It's honestly a little distracting.

He tries to twitch out from Sho's grasp but Sho's hold around his hand simply tightens. He gives the man a look that speaks volume and finds himself annoyed at the fact that Sho manages a smile that just about wreck his heart into tiny pieces.

"Sho-san -"

"You said you wanted to talk but we've been together for more than an hour now and you haven't even said anything eversince we left the hospital,"

He blinks at the road ahead, a little too conscious about his clammy hand and probably even clammier attitude. He thinks of the many things he planned on saying but he couldn't remember most of them.

Aside maybe from one thing.

"Nino said I broke your heart, i-is it true?" he blurts out the question without even thinking about it twice and hears the telltale sound of Sho's gasps. Wonderful, Jun. Just wonderful.

"I never really -" Sho pauses, then chuckles, shakes his head in apparent amusement. "Well, you could probably say that,"

He's not sure where he's going with this but to be honest, he just wants to know. He spent the last decade thinking about what could have happened if he hadn't said anything, if he stayed long enough to hear Sho's answer instead of walking away.

But instead, "You broke mine too, you know?" he says, lowly, and Sho's grip around his hand tightens, Sho's eyes finding his.

"I know, and I'm sorry,"

+++

Then, it always feels like he is chasing after something he knew he didn't have any right to.

It still feels a little bit like that now, though with the way Sho's thumb is tracing lazy circles against his skin, he wonders if he's always been just a little scared.

Of this. Of Sho.

"You could have said something, you realize," he says and he knows they don't need to go around in circles anymore, no need to put up a tough front when he knows where he wants this to go.

He loved Sho then, loves him even now and that's that. There's no need to further complicate things. They've already managed more than ten years evading this complication and well, it brought them nowhere.

In the end, they're here, older and hopefully, wiser. Wise enough to make the right decisions that they weren't able to years ago.

"I could have," Sho says and his voice sounded so fond, so tender that he can't help the sweep of nostalgia rushing over him. His chest feels like an overinflated balloon and he's not sure whether he wants to cry or laugh so hard he'll end up sobbing in relief or happiness, or both.

"But if I did, then we probably won't be where we are right now, and you won't be the Jun that you are right now,"

"I don't understand -"

Sho squeezes his hand, lifts it to his lips and drops a soft kiss against the back of his palm, the gesture so intimately sweet.

"I didn't want to hold you back, Matsumoto-san," Sho says by way of explanation and he huffs out a snort, can't not, because it's nothing but ridiculous. "I know I would have so I didn't; I knew you were off to do great things, and saying something back then would have been foolish, and I was right,"

He doesn't know whether to believe it or be charmed by what Sho is saying but then what's the point? They're out here, driving in the middle of the Tokyo traffic, talking about things that took them more than ten years to evade and he's going to judge Sho for it?

No, he don't think so.

"And now?" he asks, feeling honestly curious.

Sho smiles at him through the mirror and tugs at their joined hands again, placing them on his lap. Heat crawls up his cheeks and he knows, even without looking, that Sho is grinning like he's won the lottery.

He knows, because he's sure he has the exact same thing plastered all over his face, too.

"I'd say we've waited long enough to get the timing right so, the hell with it, will you be willing to try this again with me? I won't let you walk away this time, I promise,"

He smiles until it hurts, watches the city lights drift across Sho's face and says,

"Took you long enough,"

Sho smiles back and it's the one that broke his heart then, and the same one that stitches it back together now. Sho shakes his head and whispers,  _not at all, Ma-chan_ , and he thinks,  _yeah, maybe not_.

 

 


End file.
